CSIRAC: Our First Computer

In 1947, Maston Beard and Trevor Pearcey led a research
group at the Sydney-based Radiophysics Laboratory of the Council
for Scientific and Industrial Research (now known as CSIRO), to design and build an
electronic computer.

The resources they had available included the vacuum tube or
“valve” technology and the pulse techniques developed for radar
systems during World War II. Their developments parallelled, but
were to a considerable extent independent of computer
developments in Europe and the USA.

The CSIR Mk1 ran its first test programs in late 1949, and it
was the fifth electronic stored program computer ever developed.
It embodied many features novel at the time and was able to
operate more than 1000 times faster than the best mechanical
calculators. The machine was officially opened in 1951 and used
to solve problems both for the Radiophysics Laboratory and
outside organisations. It was decommissioned in 1955 and shipped
to Melbourne.

On 14 June 1956 the Mk1 was recommissioned and renamed CSIRAC
and the new Computation Laboratory at the University of Melbourne
was officially opened. CSIRAC was available as a
general computing workhorse — from June 1956 to June
1964 over 700 computing projects were processed.

In November 1964, Dr Frank Hirst switched CSIRAC off for the
last time and it was donated to the Museum of Victoria.